A new movie — one I haven’t yet seen, but plan to — is titled “Anonymous.” The subject is about doubts that the works of William Shakespeare — the 37 plays, many sonnets and poems — were written by someone else.

Purposely, I haven’t delved into the reviews to avoid forming a strong premature opinion, but I will posit that those who say the man from Stratford-Upon-Avon was a fake, an imposter, generally aren’t literary types.

Few serious authors, writers, poets or critics have taken up the anti-Shakespeare banner. The most vocal folks who argue that someone else deserves the honors are housewives, lawyers, doctors and some plain folks. Mark Twain, by the way, refused to believe the Bard was legitimate.

Some people say Shakespeare could not have ventured into the realm of more educated, traveled writers, such as Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe. Like some of today’s “birthers,” many critics consider Shakespeare’s place of birth as a benighted back-street slum through whose mired alleys trudged the lowest form of humanity that ever gibbered in the suburbs of Dogpatch.

The fact that we know little about Shakespeare is not justification for believing the man to have been unlettered. Were Shakespeare really illiterate, would that endear him to common people?

But this is not to become a defense of Shakespeare (that will come after I’ve watched “Anonymous”); instead, it’s about some ridiculous arguments people make in favor of ignorance. In this case, some people apparently believe that not knowing things is a plus.

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Remember when Billy Graham signed off his sermons with, “And may God bless you real good”?

Real good? My English teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sister Mary Grammatica Correcta, would have grabbed the building’s only phone to tell the man of the cloth that he ought to have said “well” instead of “good.”

And she’d probably add that if he’s going to modify “well,” he needs an adverb to do the honors: “really well,” not “real good (or well).” (I hope I made that point real good.
I believe that many are mistrustful of anyone demonstrating erudition, and that Billy Graham’s followers felt he was “one of us” because “He speaks our language, not that high-falutin’ stuff.”

Now this isn’t to imply that Las Vegas or New Mexico, or the U.S. is awash with ignorant people; it’s merely to say the advice of people like Sam Cooke (“Wonderful World”; “Don’t know much ‘bout history”) isn’t the best for us.

In a recent syndicated column, Cynthia Tucker warns of political candidates guilty of “the conflating of ignorance with authenticity.” The columnist refers to a GOP debate and some interviews in which Herman Cain, who rose to the leading spot in the pack of Republican presidential candidates, displayed a lack of knowledge about how the world operates. Tucker cited an almost braggadocio attitude of the former pizza king that hinted his “profound lack of knowledge … is one reason to support him.”

Tucker adds, “We certainly don’t need a president … who publicly disdained the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan” as someone he didn’t need to remember.”

And those who have watched the debates are aware of the brain freeze suffered by Texas Gov. Rick Perry during his “oops” moment. He needed help recalling the three federal departments he hopes to dismantle when he’s president — but wasn’t able to cite those agencies on his hit list, even if he’s determined to eliminate them.

Why have educated people become objects of such scorn? One of the anti-Stratfordians mentioned above, convinced that the Shakespeare canon was actually written by someone else, claimed that his kind of research “needed a mind uncluttered with facts” in order to prove Shakespeare wasn’t legitimate. That’s another appeal to the masses on the basis of being uninformed, or “uncluttered.”

Don’t forget the late George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, who ran for president four times and lost. He denounced those who were well educated as “pointy-headed intellectuals.” We need more of these pointies in government, not fewer.

Cain performed poorly before the editorial board of a Milwaukee newspaper, saying the country needs “a leader, not a reader,” as if one can’t be both; the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Cain has since suspended his run for the presidency.

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Billy Currington ought to team up with his amigo Sam Cooke to concoct a pre-election ditty that equates lack of knowledge or skills with “our kind of person one we’d like to have as our leader.”

Currington’s current hit is “Pretty Good at Drinkin’ Beer.” He sings, in part, “I’m not the type to work in a bank, / I’m no good at slappin’ on paint. / Don’t have a knack for makin’ motors crank, no, /But I’m pretty good at drinkin’ beer.”

So let’s juxtapose Currington’s beer-guzzling credentials with those of Sam Cooke, who sings, “Don’t know much about history/ Don’t know much biology/ Don’t know much about a science book/ Don’t know much about the French I took.”

But later, Cooke makes everything all right by revealing, “But I do know that I love you/ and I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world this will be ….”

So we have a beer drinker possibly teaming up with someone deficient in history, science, languages, algebra, trig and slide rules. Maybe they’re good at textin’.

We already have these types among us, some raking in $174,000 a year as members of the U.S. House, who dismiss things like climate change, evolution and even the obesity epidemic, according to columnist Tucker.

Some might feel a kinship with politicians and others who revel in their ignorance, but we ought to try electing informed people as our leaders.